Question

I have an app which posts a message like this to a user's Facebook timeline:

(Image of correct timeline post)

This is working fine, but if I post a few times, my posts get grouped on my news feed, and I get this:

(Image of incorrectly formatted post to news feed)

What settings should I use to control the way this news report appears? Instead of 'All about periods' and the page link in the box at the top, I'd like 'Body iQ Quiz' and the app description. Where would I set these values?

And is it possible to make the grouped report say 'Jay cee Effex shared a link via Body iQ Quiz', the way the original post does?

I'm posting from the Facebook AS3 API, and my post code looks like this:

var auth:FacebookAuthResponse = Facebook.getAuthResponse();
var token:String = auth.accessToken;
var user:String = auth.uid;
var values:Object = 
{ 
    access_token: token,
    name: "Body iQ Quiz",
    picture: "http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/282950_427728213914009_630526316_n.jpg",
    link:"http://www.lil-lets.co.uk/en-GB/Wellbeing",  
    description: "Women, how well do we know our bodies? Click here to find out what your Body iQ is.", 
    message: result.FacebookBody + " " + result.FacebookTitle
};

Facebook.api("/" + user + "/feed", handleSubmitFeed, values, URLRequestMethod.POST); 

... but I'm not sure if this is something I can fix in code, or if the app configuration needs tweaking?

NOTE: Some users report getting the latter format in their news feed even with a single post (I can't reproduce this), so perhaps grouping is a red herring, and the real question is how to format the news feed report of a timeline post?

Was it helpful?

Solution

If and when to group posts or photos is a decision Facebook makes.

(Some people suggest that grouping does not occur, if the user logs out of Facebook between making posts – but demanding or even forcing that is not a user-friendly way to behave for an app.)

In your case, I guess the reason for grouping occurring is, that it is always one and the same URL you are posting. Maybe you can avoid grouping, if you post different URLs each time – could be achieved by just adding a meaningless GET parameter to the URL. But beware, this will make them different URLs in every aspect; especially if you consider them Open Graph objects – likes for these different URLs will not accumulate, but be counted for each URL.

Apart from that, maybe posting a link over and over again is not even the right mechanism for what you are trying to achieve – maybe you’d be better of by defining some real Open Graph actions, and using those to publish your “scores” for your users on Facebook …?

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